A friend recently asked me to share our latest restoration project here (also seen on 311s.org). This project has been going for 5+ years now...

A brief introduction-- I own a small restoration company called Spriso Motorsports http://www.spriso.com which specializes in SR20DE(T) swaps into Datsun Roadsters. This particular car has been a back-burner project, but is getting closer to completion, and might be of some interest to our friends on JNC.

SPL310-3-000664 is a very well used 1500 that had the wheels driven off it my many years by a lady in Portland, Oregon.

The car lived for a long time in Idaho and is heavily rusted in the quarter and rocker panels. The wheel openings on the quarter panels had been reworked to eliminate rust once before, and at this point, the entire lower half of the quarter panels on both sides will need to be replaced. The rocker panels are toast as well!

The car has not moved under its own power in many years, the wiring harness is toast, and the hydraulics system is long since dead. This poor 1500 was a forgotten dream.

We often say that it takes three roadsters to make one, and in this case, the number was four…

The original car (in the photographs above) was found to be so rotten that you could throw a cat through it in many places. Severe structural rust that was not discovered until the car was totally torn down plagued the entire tub.

Only the fenders, hood, and trunk lid were salvageable. Not all was lost though, the interior components are all in very good condition, as was the trim, glass, chrome, and strangely, the frame was incredibly clean with no heavy corrosion like the rest of the car.

In the following years, two other parts cars followed it home, but both had been ravaged by Northwest weather and became parts donors to the project. Upon tear down of these cars, I discovered why the 1500s seem so prone to rust—there was no paint on the inside of many of the panels. The quarter panels were raw steel, the a-pillars, the same, not even a hint of primer.

I was at a loss on what to do with the project, my wife really wants a 3-seater, but everything that I could find locally was not a practical project. I was even considering converting a 66 to a 1500 clone with the components from the blue car (I saved all the 1500 specific parts!)

Then while we were building James’s SR20DET beast, Eric Straw found the car that would eventually be the new donor. After lots of investigation to find the owner, this car was purchased to become the new 1500.

Finally, we had a solid foundation to build a car from. I have lots of spares to replace the missing or damaged parts that this car had.

It was a cold, snowy January evening when we finally tracked down the car. Amazingly it was a short drive away, in a town just north of us. The owner no longer lived in the country, but a friend was storing it under a tarp and it was slowly becoming one with nature.

A staggering amount of water came off of the car when we peeled back the tarp, I did not have high expectations considering the condition of the other 1500s we had dragged home. This was one of the first discoveries:

With our petrified friend safely disposed of, we poked our fingers and our flashlights into every corner of the car... it looked good, really good. It had not been on the road for many, many years. I really did not care about the wiring, or the disassembled engine, mouse droppings or cat pee-- what we were after was a clean body, and this was the best one we had found by far. Finally this project had promise! I made arrangements, money changed hands, and the car was soon sitting in my shop.

The following weeks were spent cleaning the body so I could figure out what we really had:

Most of the car was very straight, but like anything this old, there were issues. The passenger side quarter panel had accident damage in the wheel house, and the front leading edge of the hood was damaged (like they all are), but overall, this car was going to save me months of work.

What was interesting was while the body was in very good condition, the frame had extensive rust issues. This car had spent most of its life on a farm in the Willamette Valley and the entire underside was caked in mud, and when that was peeled away, the frame showed heavy pitting in many areas.

Since this car is going to be a hybrid, the mechanical parts were sold off to other 1500 owners, and the body was put onto a body cart so we could start the paint and body work process. The frame from the original blue car (which is in very good condition, and has paperwork!) will be the foundation for this project...

The passenger side quarter panel was dented from the stainless body trim down. Upon further inspection, I could see that it had once been replaced from the body seam down at some time in it's life.

This shot shows the factory orange primer on the inside of the quarter panel. 1500s have a diamond tuck style interior panel that is glued to the inner quarter panel over a thick asphalt based sound deadener. It was missing on this side of the car so I decided to poke around a little more and see what I could discover.

The leading edge of the quarter panel was not attached on the underside where it would normally be welded to the rocker panel... it was just kind of laying there. Hmmmm. Not good. I got out my heat gun and started scraping (note the open seam above!)

Up where the quarter panel overlaps the rocker panel was just covered in crumbling body filler:

The B pillar was also showing previous damage:

Down the body seam things started getting alarming. The quarter panel was brazed in just a few places (not spot welded at the seam like the factory would have done!):

Where the quarter panel met the tail light panel was even worse (check out the holes-- wow!):

That was that-- the quarter panel was coming off, at least the section that had been replaced sometime in the cars life-- a good cut off wheel and 5-minutes later:

Other than the quarter panel, things were looking good. Overall, the floors were in good shape, with just a few pin holes that started to show up after the asphalt sound deadener was removed. If you have not had the pleasure of peeling up the 1500 sound deadener, you are in for a real treat. It is probably 3-times as thick as the stuff they used in later cars, and it is still soft and gooey, not hard and brittle like the later stuff they used. The dry ice with a hammer trick won't work on this stuff. You have to knuckle down, hit it with a heat gun and a scraper, and have fun...

Really, things were looking good:

The floor stamping on a 1500 is totally different than the later cars, and they use different reinforcements. After I got all the sound deadener off, I could still see signs of rust coming out of the reinforcements. Since this car was going to be acid dipped, I wanted to get all this stuff out of there so the acid could do it's job.

This reinforcement bar separates where the seats are and the front foot well. Looks ok, other than the rust flakes that would come out when we moved the car around:

Upon cutting it open, it was apparent that was a good idea to pull these before dipping:

Same thing for the floor reinforcement strips below the seats (just like what you see on later roadsters):

As I mentioned earlier, this car had spent most of it's life on a farm and had seen lots of miles on dirt roads. The rocker panels were very thin when we tapped on them-- we knew that these would also need to be replaced when the car was acid dipped. Sure enough, they were full of dirt:

We also removed the factory lead work on the quarter panels and tail light panel before sending out to be dipped as the acid won't touch the lead, and this is a typical spot where you see roadsters bodywork crack (at the corner of the trunk):

Dash and Floors (note the weird access panel that a PO cut into the transmission tunnel!):

Rear Interior:

Trunk:

Engine Compartment:

Cowl Area:

Kudos to John and his crew at Metalworks in Eugene Oregon (http://www.metaldipping.com), they did a great job on getting this car stripped back to the original steel, now I can tackle the metal work so we can get it to paint and body.

The rocker panels were junk on this car. We cut them out before going to the dipper, and it was a good thing too, as they were full of crud and rust. 95% of the rocker was cut out of the passenger side and fortunately, the sheet metal was good on the rocker backing plate.

The entire panel was cleaned off, and the rebuild starts! Unfortunately, the rebuild also extended into the A-pillar as the top of the rocker panel where the A-pillar overlaps was also rotten out. To make matters worse, the hinge backing plate was damaged as well as the captive nuts were all broken on the original A-pillar. Rather than try to patch it, the entire A-pillar was also cut off to make things a bit easier to repair. Oh this is fun!

The replacement rocker panel was saved off a parts car, like nearly all roadster rockers it had rust in the normal spots, but nothing that could not be easily rebuilt. The unfortunate thing was it had also been cut in two at some point in its life, so I am going to have to re-skin it. At least the end caps were way better than the original 64 parts!

The rear section was clean on the top side, it just needed to have the old quarter panel seam ground off of it:

The underside is where the problem was. The quarter panel overlays this section, and the inevitable rust had started. Time to start cutting it all out:

If you notice the red marks, they show the two profiles that the underside of the rocker have. These were repaired in two different sections so when the replacement quarter panel is installed, it will sit flush with the rocker panel:

On the front section of the rocker panel, the donor panel also had rust where the A-pillar overlaps it:

This was carefully cut out (spot welds on the reinforcement plate were cut out:

A new piece was fabricated and welded in.

The underside of the rocker panel had rust damage from where the front fender overlaps the rocker panel-- you can see the exterior rust damage here:

The inside of the panel was clean, with just minor rust... all the rust was cut out and replaced with new sheet metal, which was also painted before being installed:

As I mentioned earlier, the original A-pillar was cut off and a donor 68 and later A-pillar was sourced. If you ever need to replace the A-pillar, get one from a high-windshield car as they have a reinforcement plate welded into them for better hinge support:

And here it is being mocked up using clecos to hold it into position as it is being welded:

Upon the advice from Dave B. the transmission tunnel was also modified to clear the SR gearbox. Here is the original profile before the sheet metal was moved over to provide clearance:

Once that was moved over, we did a test fit with a transmission with a SR bellhousing on it to see how things cleared. One of the nice things about having the body on a rotisserie is that it is easy to do this!

And last, but not least, a NOS quarter panel has been found! Thanks to Ross at Sports Imports and Mitch for bringing it down from Canada! It is now at the dippers getting the surface rust off of it so everything is nice and clean again!

Work continues on the "birthday present"... The car is off the rotisserie and has been mounted onto the frame which has been welded to a body cart. This will keep everything square and happy when the quarter panel is cut off of the car and it will make sure that the panels fit correctly when the body is mounted on the frame after coming back from paint.

Guy Byrd, a local panel fitter and vintage sheet metal wiz, came over today to help make sure that everything fits correctly-- we want to make sure that the new quarter panel fits correctly and the gaps are all correct-- I can't order a new one from Nissan if I screw this up!

We mounted the door, fender and trunk lid to make sure that the panel gaps were correct before cutting off the old quarter panel. Guy went to work, and soon the gaps were like they should be, and we were sure that the car was sitting square and straight on the frame.

Guy went to work with his die grinder and started cutting out spot welds:

The top edge then was lifted off:

I worked on the inner panel where the quarter panel is welded to the recess in the floor. You can see the previous brazing that was done to attach the old quarter panel during it's previous repair who knows how long ago... all of that will be ground off and smoothed out with a hammer and dolly before the new quarter panel is installed:

And here is how the car looks tonight. A bit naked without the quarter panel!

And the NOS quarter panel after coming back from Metalworks http://www.metaldipping.com-- all surface rust gone, everything clean and ready to install!

Today Guy and I installed the new quarter panel on the car. Last week we got everything stripped off, but we still needed to clean up the existing sheet metal and prep the areas for paint on the inside of the panels. This is the perfect time to seal all of this up with some paint before the new panel is welded on.

The edges were masked off and Zero Rust http://www.zero-rust.com was painted on the inside of the quarter panel structure:

The inside of the quarter panel was masked and painted on the front half (where the paint gun won't easily reach when the car is in color:

Then the panel was very carefully installed. This took several hours of fitting to get all the gaps and profiles right. Guy is an expert at this and I was really impressed with his methodical work.

A few hours later, this is what it looks like:

And the inside of the trunk:

Everything needs to be finish ground, but at last the major hurdle body wise is handled. A couple more weekends of metal work and the car will be ready to go to paint!

mike , how did you get to the front side of the wheelwell? through the 3 circular holes?

The inside structure was drilled all the way through so we could plug weld the flange from the back side:

The quarter panel flange was left solid so when it was clamped together we could weld to the flange through the inner quarter panel (below the 3 holes):

We used a variety of vice grips through the 3 holes in the inner fender and were able to get everything nice and tight on the flange. It turned out great, with a nice and tight seam. It will get a little seam sealer when the car goes to paint and it should be good to go:

When we originally got this car, the driver's rocker panel was looking a bit thin, and we cut access holes so we could flush out the dirt and rust, and so it could flush out what was left.

When we got the car back from dipping, there was lots of evidence that there was advanced corrosion on the inside of the panel working its way from the inside out. To do the job right, all of this needed to be cut off...

A shot of the inside of the rocker panel-- you can see how thin things were:

The green is converted rust, there was no way that I could get to the inside of the rocker to get all of that out:

The top of the sill plate also was rusting from the inside out -- see the extra holes:

And the rear of the rocker where the quarter panel overlaps the rocker panel was also very thin (with rust holes):

So, out came the plasma cutter and a few minutes later, the rocker panel was off the car so I could figure out what I have to deal with (you can see the dirt level on the rocker panel backing plate):

Looking back at the rear of the rocker, you can see how packed with dirt/rust this area was as well:

The wire wheel made short work of the crusty remains (though the shop is a terrible mess!)

Here is where we are as of tonight. The rocker panel is off the car. I still need to get the remains on the inside of the quarter panel, but that should not be too big of a deal. I have a rebuilt rocker panel to put back on the car and I will get that process documented when it occurs:

I have been trying to slow down and take more images to share of the body rebuild-- it can be hard to stop the work (and the shop is a disaster with all the dust and crud in the air!) but I figure this is important stuff for people who might not have been down this road before...

With the majority of the driver's rocker cut off the car, this morning was spent cutting out the remains so the newly rebuilt donor rocker panel could be installed. Since both the A-pillar and the rear quarter panel overlap the rocker panel, it took quite a bit of time to cut out the remains so the new panel could be slipped into place.

The first part that needed to be dealt with was the bottom of the A-pillar. When I cut the old panel out, I just trimmed around the existing welds, and the plan was to die grind the material away. But after seeing what the inside of the rocker panel looked like, plus with my experience with the bottom of the passenger A-pillar, I decided to cut the bottom portion of the A-pillar out-- and in hindsight, I am glad I did, it was full of crud:

Since the kick panel in front of the A-pillar also overlaps the rocker panel, it needed to be carefully spot weld drilled so I could remove the section that is sandwiched between the rocker panel backing plate and the kick panel:

With all of that removed, all the sections were wire wheeled and prepped for the new rocker panel.

The rear portion of the rocker panel is also overlapped by the quarter panel. Since I did not want to cut any more of the rocker panel out than I had to, I had to figure out a way to get access to the top portion of the rocker panel where it is welded to the backing plate. The only way to do this was to cut an access hole in the inside quarter panel backing plate:

This allowed me to get the plasma cutter in so I could cut out the remains of the original rocker panel:

Then from the bottom side, it was just a matter of using my die grinder with a carbide bit to cut out the remains:

Now I could get inside the quarter panel with my wire wheel and clean and paint it before the new rocker panel was installed.

As I mentioned earlier, a 'new' rocker panel was sourced, but even that needed to have the front and rear sections rebuilt due to rust damage... After that was completed, the entire backside was cleaned, and painted with Zero Rust:

The end that is overlapped by the quarter panel was also painted with Zero Rust as I won't be able to paint it once it is installed:

The rocker panel backing plate was also cleaned up, the jack point hole was welded up (they will be removed from this car), and the panel was masked, and painted with Zero Rust:

Guy Byrd was here helping again today, and with all the grunt work out of the way, I turned him loose with the rocker panel so he could make sure that all the gaps are correct and everything is sitting like it should. He reinstalled the driver's door, and adjusted everything until the gaps were all correct. Then it was just a matter of welding it into place.

And as it sits tonight (still need to finish grind everything, but you get the idea):

Tomorrow we will finish the front half of the quarter panel and I will rebuild the front leg of the A-pillar...

Today got off to a good start, Guy and I got both rocker panels finished, well nearly finished, I still need to patch the jack point on the driver's side, but here are some pics:

Now that the rockers are basically out of the way, the last major issue was the rust in the trunk drop on the driver's side of the car. From the outside, there were just a few tell-tale pin holes that were on the rear quarter panel fender lip (how bad can it really be?):

And from the rear, more tell-tale holes-- it was rotting from the inside out!:

A look on the inside of the trunk drop confirms the story-- remember, all that is green is converted rust/crud from the acid bath:

Obviously, water and dirt had been sitting in here for a very long time. Since there were so many pin holes, this area needed to be cut out and replaced. I had a donor panel from a car that we had parted (a real Bondo queen!) but it had a very solid trunk drop that I processed off and spent several hours scraping undercoating, body filler removing, and bead blasting to get it to look like this:

From the backside, it was also pretty clean (after bead blasting!):

Now that we had our donor panel, Guy marked the quarter panel and started cutting it out with a die grinder:

It is probably a really good thing we decided to remove this section-- compare it to the 'new' donor panel!

With the original trunk drop removed from the car, I started removing the remains and cleaning everything up. As I started up the fender lip, more and more dirt and crud came out as I scraped the gap. I even found a few dropped (and very rusty) side trim nuts that had been wedged in-between the fender lip and wheel house for who-knows how long. The problem was we could still see way more crud in there, and a few more pin holes developed in the inner fender.

You know what that means... Trim, trim, trim, until we hit solid, clean metal:

I really did not want to have to start building outer fender lips, but Guy got to work with his hammer and dolly and whipped out a very nice fender lip that we tacked into the quarter panel-- that will take care of the outside:

The inside is another matter. Here is what we cut out-- the shiny radial marks are how deep I could get with the flat-blade screw driver, as you can see, there was still a lot left to get out! That rust was sandwiched between the wheel house and the outer skin of the quarter panel...

Other than one pin-hole, it did not look that bad from the outside:

A few minutes with the bead blaster got the metal clean again:

The lower third of this part was cut out and replaced, here is the new part coated in Zero Rust and ready to go back in:

And that is where we are tonight-- I will post another update tomorrow-- hopefully we should have a majority of the metal work finally wrapped up tomorrow!

Just three photos for tonight. In this shot Guy is using one of the many Vice Grips from his bag of tricks. This kept the sheet metal aligned and flat as the quarter panel was welded:

Inside of the trunk looking at the back side of the quarter panel:

And finally, the quarter panel looking like a normal car again:

Next weekend we hope to have the metal work finished up. I need to patch the driver's A-pillar, patch a rust hole on the bottom of the driver's door, and Guy is going to patch the bottom of the driver's fender. Hmmmm. That is starting to sound like more than a weekend...

More progress to report-- this time the fender patch on the passenger fender. As I am sure that many of you know, 1500 front fenders are very difficult to come up with. The original fender on this car was straight and clean other than the lower corner which had previous accident damage under the reinforcement rib, as well as rust issues in the lower corner.

After dipping, the fender came back a little lighter than when it went in! The tell-tale pin holes and heavy pitting on the backside needed to be repaired before the car goes to paint.

As part of putting the rocker and A-pillar on the car, we hung all the sheet metal on the car and Guy got busy with the hammer and dolly to get the fender as straight as possible before we cut everything out. He wanted to be sure that it fit properly on the car before we changed things again. With the dents pounded out, the edge now looked like this:

It was straight now, fit the door gap correctly, but the rust still needed to be cut out:

Guy got busy with the die grinder and cut out the rotten portion of the bottom of the fender:

We cut the fender just short of the inner fender lip. 1500's have a very pronounced crease around the lip of the fender and we did not want to disturb it, especially since it was not damaged by rust.

Then over the course of a couple hours, the patch panel was reworked (the edge did not match the profile of the backside of the fender) and tacked into place, allowing the sheet metal to cool between welds to prevent warping:

Weld, cool, grind, cool, hammer and dolly. Repeat until completed!

Again, I would like to thank everyone for their comments. I have a very talented group of people helping with this project and I am very fortunate to have their enthusiasm, energy, and skills!

Since the weather was not cooperating with putting on some DP40 sealer primer, I started work on the frame modifications to put the SR20DE into the chassis. You have probably seen my write up on how to do an SR conversion into a roadster (aka "Bob") http://www.311s.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5128. That was 2006 and since then we have developed a rental JIG for installing the Spriso Motorsports SR20 motor mounts that places the engine in the correct location, at the correct tilt, and takes out all the guess work on installing our kit.

This is "Jiggy":

What Jiggy does is hang two motor mount base plates in space allowing you to trim the motor mount base plates that come with our kit to match your frame. Due to the many minor variations that we have seen in the frames over the years, we have found this to be the best method to get the best fit for individual frames.

After looking at dozens of frames, we have found that the spacing for the body mounts in the engine compartment have been pretty universal and we designed two 9/16" pins that fit into these holes (the roadster holes are about a 1/32 undersized, so we drill them out with a 9/16" drill bit to make a nice secure fit!):

When both holes are drilled out, the pins slide into the holes, and a simple C clamp is used to keep the jig sitting secure and square:

Neither motor mount base plate on the JIG actually touches the frame at this point:

The motor mount base plates that I send out with my kits need to be trimmed to match the profile of the frame (you can see about 1/4"-3/8" of excess material that will need to be trimmed:

After trimming back the overlapping top piece, we actually get to the frame sidewall. The trimmed motor mount base plate is bolted to the JIG using the provided 8mm bolts:

The motor mount base plate is welded in two passes, first a root pass to get things seated to the vertical portion of the frame rail, then a wider top pass to tie the gap together (be careful not to get your weld into the chassis VIN number-- a 1500 VIN is longer so it gets closer to the edge of the frame rail):

The passenger side is a little different. Where the motor mount plate is located the frame actually curves away and has a step in it, so the cut on this is a little more difficult to figure out. I like to make a pattern on card stock so I can figure out the cuts on the base plate:

Then it is just a matter of trimming and lining up the holes to make sure that there is a good fit on the passenger side frame rail:

Trim, adjust, weld, grind... you know the drill!

That takes care of the motor mount base plates, then it is just a matter of building some new side gussets to tie them into the frame:

If you are considering a SR20 swap into your roadster, Jiggy makes things much easier as it takes all the guess work out of the project, and will easily save you 8-10 hours of setup time. Contact me directly for rental information! Jiggy has been sent all around the country (even Alaska and Canada!) and feedback has been very positive!

As for the roadster body, the metal work is done, the underside has been hit with scotch brite one last time before sealer primer, and as soon as the weather cooperates, we will get the first coat of sealer on...

While the body is at the paint and body shop, the frame will be reassembled and made into a roller so we can put the freshly repainted body onto the powder coated frame for the reassembly.

I have been digging out all the parts that I have been squirreling away for this project (and in some cases trying to figure out where some of the parts went! ) and came across these beauties:

This is a pair of NOS upper ball joints that were sourced directly out of Japan. Amazing as it might seem, but they have never been used-- the rubber boots have disintegrated into some sort of super sticky rubber/tar/indelible ink substance that is VERY difficult to remove from your skin!

A close up:

I will get them cleaned up with new paint, boots and grease, and we should be good to go. I had heard about rotten boots on ball joints before, so I thought the images would be worth sharing!